


My Enemy is the Color Red

by Kisleth



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Deathfic, M/M, Pheels, bad first aid practice (or Clint's Guide to Stopping Arterial Bleeding with Your Finger)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-06
Updated: 2012-09-06
Packaged: 2017-11-13 17:06:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kisleth/pseuds/Kisleth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>HYDRA is running rampant across the Helicarrier. It's all SHIELD and the Avengers can do to beat them back before they can enter the base itself. It's going well until Clint sees Coulson go down and he leaps from his perch up high to get to his side.</p><p>Drabble prompt: my character has just died in front of yours, write a drabble about their reaction (from a tumblr role play where the prompter is Agent Coulson and my character is Clint Barton)</p><p>Warnings: bad first aid practice (or Clint's Guide to Stopping Arterial Bleeding with Your Finger)</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Enemy is the Color Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KibblerEars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KibblerEars/gifts).



Clint throws himself off of the ledge he'd been viewing the melee from and cracks his bow across someone's face, all of the force and body weight behind it. They were in his way. Everyone is in his way. He's out of arrows too, but he steals a gun off of someone and is blasting his way to where he saw Coulson go down. He kicks someone in the face, some enemy hovering over Coulson's body, and watches them fly off the platform and down, down, down off the helicarrier.

"Coulson," he breathes, trusting the other agents to cover for him now that he is at his handler's side. "Coulson, lookit me." His throat hurts and his voice is raw but he can't remember why. Maybe is has something to do with the scream he'd heard earlier (but it couldn't have been him. No. Not at all. The person who screamed had too much emotion. Clint didn't... Clint hid it... the person who screamed sounded as if their world had just ended. They sounded as if nothing would ever be right again, as if they had lost everything that had ever matter to them. And it couldn't be... it couldn't be him).

Coulson's eyes are glassy, but the blood is still flowing out of him, which means his heart is still beating. Clint does the only thing he can think of and slowly pushes his fingers into the wound to pinch the artery just enough to hold it closed in hopes that it just might be enough until the agent can get into surgery. "Please," his voice cracks, "Phil, please." Panicked grey-blue eyes watch the older man blink and turn toward him. "Oh thank fuck." Clint breathes, "Oh fuckin' fuck, Phil." His eyes burn and he knows if he doesn't hold them back, he'll be crying.

The slight widening of Coulson's eyes make Clint jerk, grab the gun and spin around, his fingers still inside holding Coulson together as he takes out another HYDRA soldier with a well-placed bullet in the eye. He doesn't thank Phil because he doesn't need to. They've been doing this so long now that 'thank you' is implied upon death of the adversary. "You're gonna be okay, sir." Clint promises vehemently. He's not going to let it be otherwise. He's infinitely more important to the world and SHIELD and everyone than Clint himself, or so the archer believes. He'd only just got him back a month ago. They had just started back into their skirting around each other's feelings and trying to stay strictly business. As if one near-death experience hadn't taught them that there was no time to waste. (In their defense, the first time they'd both been pretty deep in denial about how they felt to the point that there were very few signs. The last month had been painfully obvious to those closest to the two and they were eking out the time before they had to confront whatever it was between them. And now...)

"Barton," Phil forces out, blood bubbling at his lips. Clint's stomach drops. No. No, no, no. This is bad. He wants to shush him, but with Phil's determination, the older man would just try to keep talking purely out of principle. The hand holding the gun goes lax and it drops onto his thigh so Clint can reach out and cup the side of Phil's neck. He strokes his thumb along the clammy skin to cover the fact that he's checking his pulse.

"You're fine, sir. I'm gonna take care of you." His voice is thick with unshed tears and he hates himself for it. He hates that he isn't made of something stronger for Coulson. He feels as though he's letting the man down by being so emotional. His heart stops when he feels Phil's lung shudder near the fingers he's pressed inside him and his gut lurches. He's been so distracted by trying to keep the man's eyes open that he forgot he had plugged a hole or more in him with his own fingers. "Hey, shhh, you're gonna be fine. The medic'll get over here soon." His throat closes on the lie.

Coulson is a brilliant handler and a fantastic agent and the best man Clint has ever known... but half of the medical ward had been blown up during the first wave of attack. Most of whom were alive were otherwise preoccupied with more important agents. Specialists whose abilities are far too valuable compared to a normal agent and they are too out of the way, covering the rear of the ship, just them and Natasha.

"How is he?" Speak of the devil. Natasha's voice is as crystal clear in his ear as if she were standing next to them. Clint lets his eyes leave his handler for the briefest second to see her holding off HYDRA members, a few of his arrow stuck through the back of her belt to return to him when they were close again. Luckily, Cap is with her and helping hold back the wave.

"I'm not dead yet." Phil replies, and Clint almost smiles at the Monty Python joke. He's so focused on Phil that he almost misses Natasha's request to keep her posted. He just grunts an affirmative and continues to watch him breathe and feel his heart beat. "Barton." Clint looks up from the wound to Phil's face. "Clint..." He coughs and Clint can feel hot blood gush around his fingers. His heart clenches and he has to close his eyes tightly. Phil raises his hand slowly and cups Clint's face. It's then that he realizes his cheek is wet. He opens reddened eyes to see such devastation on the older man's face. He weakly tugs Clint forward and he doesn't hesitate to move in. He freezes when Phil starts to cough again, his eyes closing when a spray of blood leaves his mouth.

"Fuck, Phil... don't talk. Please." Phil gives him the ghost of a smile with gory lips and pulls Clint down more. Unable to refuse him, he soon finds their mouths pressed together. He shakes as Phil's hand slips from his face. Their lips stick together momentarily from the tackiness of the blood. He just barely feels a breath on his face as he reaches Phil's lips. There's no voice to back the 'I love you' and Clint hates in that second how he'll never hear the man actually tell him.

"I love you too," Clint chokes out and he can see the corners of Phil's mouth quirk, a smile at the very end. He knows the elder had heard him and it's a bit of a relief. He breathes shakily as tears burn his eyes and this time he doesn't bother to hold them back. A sob wracks his body and he hears the team question him as to what's wrong over the comms but he isn't listening.

He presses his forehead against Phil's, their noses side by side as Clint's face screws up and his teeth are bared in some heart-wrenching mockery of a smile. The smile that Phil never got to finish. He slips his fingers from the dead man's chest and cups Phil's neck in both hands, leaving smears of blood as he gently strokes his handler's neck, all the skin he can easily reach. "Phil, Phil, Phil..." he murmurs brokenly on repeat, half a chant and half a prayer than he'd come back. The world falls away to black except for Phil and Phil's suit and Phil's open eyes and Phil's blood.

He can see clean, pristine tracks down Phil's face. Tears, two sets of them. Phil had cried. When? Clint doesn't know, but he hates himself more for it. Phil shouldn't have died crying. It should have been smiling. That halfway smile that always made Clint's heart clench...

It's clenching now.

He stares into Coulson's open, blank gaze and just lets it all out while everyone else fights for them. He can't bring himself to stand, he can't feel his legs. He drowns himself in Coulson's eyes, blocking everything out for as long as he can. He needs to ingrain them in his memory and never forget—not that he thinks he could. Bluish-green with golden brown fleckes and dark, welcome pupils to forever be in his mind. Just colors, colors that are Coulson.

The next thing he knows, he's being tugged away. The haze of tears has reduced the world to smears of color and a smudge of black with a scarlet pouf on top prises his hands away. He fights it. No, no. Not the color red. He curls back into the black and white and blue and green and then a solid grip is on his arms, red again. He screams and shoves, but the arms slip around him and there's blue but it's the wrong blue.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

He screams. He screams for Coulson. Screams and begs and sobs, 'Coulson! Coulson, wake up!' but Coulson doesn't move. He blames the red. The color is all over him, all over his torso and neck and lips. Red is his least favorite color. He thrashes in the tight grip. He doesn't want red to touch him at all. His throat hurts but he won't stop screaming until the red is gone and—

Massive hands pluck him from the red and he's cradled against a giant green chest. Not quite Phil-green but so close and not red. Not. Red. He curls in on himself and sobs and he can't stop asking for Coulson. For Phil. He just wants Phil. His head aches from all the crying and his eyes are almost swollen shut when he feels something warm around him. Warm and black with that wonderful, familiar scent.

Clint drags it over his head and hides from his greatest enemy to relax in the black and the green and the large hands that are holding him so gently. He presses his face to the pectoral he's cradled against and rubs away some tears as his world softly begins to drop away...

Until there is nothing left but Phil.


End file.
